Truly Bored

118 hours.

It amazes me just how much time I’ve sunk into Civilization 5. What amazes me more is how many of those hours are complete throw aways. I wish I could click somewhere and see the statistic on how many games of Civ I’ve actually finished. It’s gotta be under 10%.

And yet, we play.

I say we because I know I’m not alone. Whether it’s Skyping a multiplayer with my friends or just hearing them talk about how they play Civ, we’re all doing the same thing. We’re playing it over and over again and never, so rarely finishing it.

There’s something about the process of building a city and walking through the early stages of the game that just hits all the right notes. Transitioning into the mid-game and your strategy just clicking or more likely just falling apart. Barbarians at your borders ruining everything. Ruins changing everything. Ruins changing nothing.

It is a Triumph

Because how many games are there out there that you’ll constantly go back to and just go through the motions.

It is a Failure

Because how many games are there out there that you’ll constantly go back to and just go through the motions. Yes, that was intentional.

How many games keep you coming back and don’t close. That’s a failure. I’ll admit I haven’t bought the expansion. I haven’t heard enough about it to believe it’ll change how I feel. I believe the issue is that Civ at its core is not a militaristic game, it’s a city builder. Traversing the technology tree and boosting your culture allow for such beautiful customization.

And then Everyone else shows up

And shits on everything.

And yet, I like the barbarian element, but that point where you realize you’ve got to start attacking cities and ignore the cities you’ve so perfectly crafted in order to go to war is just horrible. Equally horrible is the feeling of just sitting there while everyone else goes to battle. You sit and you pray that someone won’t notice you’re climbing ahead. Or worse, you sit and you fall behind as catapults catapult your enemies to victory via capturing cities.

118 hours. And it could have been better. Wow. A triumph. A failure.

“To the Moon” represents yet another Indie game I bought off Steam, played for a few minutes and immediately regretted buying. I was left thinking why did I buy this in the first place and were there any true RPGs really left out there. Certainly, none where to be found on Steam.

Thankfully, I decided one day to give the game another chance. I decided that I was going to turn Netflix off on the other monitor, crank up the game sound and actually give one of these games a chance.

And sometimes… it pays off

Spoiler alert: This game is fantastic.

Then again, is it even really a game? I’m not going to lie to you, if you’re looking for compelling game play, this title doesn’t have it. The story is unbelievable though and in that right, the game play is exactly what it needs to be. You’re more playing a book than a game.

So, how do I know when it’s time to give up?

Well I’d like to say never because I truly believe this game is that worth completing. (and at around 5 hours and a difficulty score of a banana, any gamer has the ability to complete this) However, if you must know when you’ve given this game enough of a chance, I’d say it’s when you’ve gone back in time about twice. If you’re not following along by this time, you’re probably not going to get into this one.

The basic premise (not sure why I waited this long to mention this either…) is you’re a couple doctors utilizing this fancy technology that allows you to grant people’s wishes by aiding them in engineering memories. You do this, at least in this patient’s case, by starting close to the present day and gradually jumping back in time. Essentially, once you can convince the young version to pursue this wish/dream/etc, they’ll do it and this technology somehow lets them.

And don’t worry, I’ve ruined nothing… you’ll learn all this before jumping back in time twice. You’ll learn all this in 15 minutes or so. You’ll learn all this and still possibly not be into this game. And you’ll possibly quit playing this game even once you know all this…

And that’ll be a mistake.

I’m not sure how many times I can say this. Play. This. Game.

It’s games like this that are the reason why every time I lose faith in Indie games and start to feel like I’m wasting my time and money that I keep giving them a chance because every now and then you find that ridiculous long run on sentence… I mean diamond in the rough.

You won’t be bored.

Played an Engineer and quit. There’s just something about the movement and targeting of Torchlight that doesn’t sit well with me. To be fair, it didn’t sit well with me in Diablo 3 as well either. I think it has to be the spammy nature of rpg gaming these days that’s doing it. I reflect back on Diablo 2 and the only thing I can think of is that I couldn’t just sit there and hammer on people… at least not for very long.

I had to actually use my abilities to survive.

I couldn’t use my abilities an endless amount of times.

Thought was required.

Everything is now a rush. Even the silly pet going back to town is just another rush. Too much efficiency can be a bad thing. When you look at what happened to World of Warcraft… that’s it in a nut shell. Too much efficiency. Giving people exactly what they want pretty much ruined the experience. Or more accurately, changed the experience to one that those of us started with don’t enjoy anymore.

That’s Torchlight 2 for me as was Torchlight 1 as was Diablo 3. It’s a game that looks like a game I should like, but I don’t like it. Or at least, I don’t love it. It’s got the pieces, but the formula is all wrong.

That’s really what this whole boring journey is about… finding games that actually fit my play style. It would seem as I evolve as a gamer, it’s becoming increasingly harder to really impress and ensnare me in a game.

They all suck in their own special way.

That’s probably not true, but right now, that’s how I feel as I sit here trying to re-install “Towns” for the 4th time. I’m looking down my Steam gaming library list at all the worthless, terrible Indie games and I can’t help, but be frustrated as hell. You see the great joke about Indie games is that they don’t cost much.

The reality is they cost a ton. I’m desperate for $60 games again because while Diablo 3 ultimately disappointed me… it didn’t do that until I’d played it for 200+ hours. Indie games bore me to tears in hours. Or they simply don’t work. Or they have annoying music that you can’t turn off. Or they can’t be played in windowed mode.

I’ll fully admit that I have very specific needs as a gamer. I’ve played a lot of games and as a result I’ve lost patience for playing betas. I don’t care about ideas anymore, I want complete games like the kind I grew up with. I’m not going to forgive your lack of story if you’ve got great game mechanics and I’m not going to forgive your crappy game mechanics if you’ve got a great story. I want everything and I’m tired of Indie games giving me polished turds.

So, the question is… how easy is it for me to get Steam to give me my money back? Hmm…

(and I have such high hopes for this silly town builder… maybe 4th time is the charm)

It’s a troubling trend that horror is emerging as the story told in video games. Or I should say, it’s a troubling trend for me. I don’t like scary movies. Now I won’t deny that this is partially because I don’t particularly like being scared, but there is more to it than that. Horror has a different objective. It’s objective really isn’t to tell a story, it’s to scary you. It’s to disturb you. It’s to invoke those emotions. I don’t like those emotions. I don’t suppose anyone really does. My theory is that it’s that moment after you’ve experience those emotions and realized you’ve survived that are the reason people like horror. It’s that feeling of your heart racing trying to burst out of your chest. That’s why people like, even love, horror.

Or I could be completely wrong. People are weird. It’s not too much of a stretch to say people who live for horror are a bit weirder. At least from my perspective.

Video games. Right… yes. I don’t like this trend because it’s about making the gamer experience emotions I’m not seeking from a game. I can tell that Bioshock is a masterpiece after playing it for only 15 minutes, but I can also tell I won’t be playing it again. That’s not a good thing for me. I certainly didn’t get a great return on my investment on that one even with buying it years later on sale on Steam.

What bothers me about the horror genre is that it seems to lend itself to “pretty” games with simplistic mechanics. You see the goal isn’t to tell a story and it’s also not even to create an interesting game. It’s to create an interesting experience. Horror games feel more like an interactive movie than they do a video game. Yes, yes, insert multiple exceptions here. (news flash: I’ve already mentioned Bioshock) Clearly, I’m not well researched at all on this topic. Logically though, if you’re going to make a horror game, your priorities are not the same as someone making an adventure, strategy or fps game.

The genre seems to be engulfing games and becoming a beast of its own. Which I suppose is fitting.

Still I don’t like them.

Don’t turn off the light.